Homegirls

This will be my second time taking the National Novel Writing Month challenge, also known as NaNoWriMo. The first time I did it in 2009, it really was a tool to help me cope with the loss of a friend to cancer that September. I didn’t finish because the story I was writing forced me to go back and examine parts of our youth that were painful reminders of her absence by November 18, 2009, the day that would have been her 36th birthday, it really was too much an emotional ride for me to take. So I put the story away. In the years since, the story has continued to linger in the recesses of my mind— sometimes I…